Class is a dirty word in that it gets close to the truth about who governs and for whose benefit.

– Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti is an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer. He is one of the nation’s leading progressive political analysts. His highly informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.

In the land of those who think they’re free and the home of savage capitalism, class is indeed a dirty word. Remember, we’re a nation of Joe the Plumbers. If we just work hard enough and fend off those socialist vampires who want to suck us dry by redistributing our hard-earned wealth, we can all be financial successes. And if you’re a faux-progressive presidential candidate—like Obama, you’re doomed to political perdition unless you sign a blood oath disavowing your ties to socialism.

Yet there are a few political analysts and academics who dare to blaspheme against capitalism, which is the “God” this benighted land truly worships—despite the disgustingly hypocritical veneer of faux Christianity. Remember that Michael Parenti has one of the filthiest mouths you’ll ever hear. He dares to repeatedly spew profane diatribes against capitalism, the sacrosanct basis for our precious American Way of Life. Parenti has the chutzpah to derisively attack our system, which we all know is the best that’s ever been (or will be), by asserting that there are divisions amongst US Americans based on socioeconomic standing. And worst of all? He uses the “C” word! Somebody needs to give his mouth a good cleansing with a bar of Dial!

Parenti recently answered a few questions Jason Miller threw his way. Let’s see how much further he traveled on the road to perdition…

Jason Miller: You’re one of the best kept secrets of the “American Left” (ridiculously marginalized and small in number as we are). Why is it that despite your brilliant critiques, particularly of bourgeois revisionist history, you remain relatively obscure even amongst the more radical segment of the US population?

Michael Parenti: It’s really not all that bad. People do describe me as “widely acclaimed” and “internationally known” etc. and I do reach varied audiences in North America and abroad with my writings, lectures, and interviews. But it is true that there are sectarian or small minded elements on the left – including some very prominent figures – who are quiet practitioners of McCarthyism in that they exclude or try to isolate anyone who (a) places a strong emphasis on the realities of class power (b) occasionally uses a Marxist analysis or (c) finds some things of value in existing socialist societies that are worthy of being preserved, such as human services, guaranteed right to a job, free education, free medical care, affordable housing for all, etc. These societies, now mostly defunct, have been deemed by most of the left as worthy of nothing but a constant unremitting denunciation.

JM: Do you think the bourgeoisie has begun demonizing environmentalists and animal rights advocates because they perceive us to be a legitimate threat to the system, is the Green Scare simply another aspect of the divide and conquer tactic, do animal and Earth exploiters wield that much power within the system, is it a combination of these, or something more?

MP: The purveyors of free-market global capitalism believe that they have a right to plunder the remaining natural resources of this planet as they choose. Anyone who challenges their agenda is to be subjected to whatever misrepresentation and calumny that serves the free market corporate agenda.

JM: How has the capitalist class in the US been so successful at convincing the masses that we live in a “classless society” and etching a cultural standard in granite that it is taboo to discuss class issues?

MP: Through control of the universe of discourse, including the media, the professions, the universities, the publishing industry, many of the churches, the consumer society, the job market, and even the very socialization of our children and the prefiguring of our own perceptions, the ruling interests are able to exercise a prevailing ideological control that excludes any reasoned critique of the dominant paradigm. Class is a dirty word in that it gets close to the truth about who governs and for whose benefit.

JM: What are your thoughts on Obama and what change we may see under his presidency?

MP: I greeted Obama’s electoral victory with very little enthusiasm but much relief that the lying slime-bag right-wing John McCain was defeated. I think Obama will be another Bill Clinton, perhaps not as bad. Some people see his accession to the White House as a great historic victory for African Americans and for democracy. But I am not all that impressed. When the victory is extended into social democratic policies that have a salutary effect on millions of struggling impoverished African-Americans and other working poor, then I’ll start dancing in the streets.

JM: Prior to Obama’s election, a number of radical thinkers posited that the US was in a pre-revolutionary stage. What impact do you think the Obama administration will have on the potential of consciousness, anger, and social unrest reaching critical mass amongst the working class in the US in the near future? Or better yet, are you even optimistic that the American people will catch fire and revolt against our wretchedly rapacious and imperialistic system?

MP: I do not think we are entering a pre-revolutionary stage. However political struggle can be a surprising phenomenon emerging with great democratic force and sudden movement in the most unexpected ways. We are approaching an economic crisis of momentous scope. The radical reactions may not be all that progressive and rational. The unfortunate thing about corporate capitalism is that it is often advantaged by the very wretched conditions it itself creates. I am hoping that the social groups that have been activated by Obama’s campaign will not go to sleep and will not let up the pressure for progressive change.

JM: What do you say to critics who assert that socialism is a utopian dream in the abstract and a nightmare in reality?

MP: Your question is a paraphrase of the one I posed in my book, Democracy for the Few. “Is socialism not just a dream in theory and a nightmare in practice?” In response I pointed out that the features which make life livable in capitalist society are mostly socialistic in practice, including human services, infrastructure development, environmental protections, and even many technological advances that are funded or even created by government sources.

JM: With Castro hanging in there and now Chavez, Morales, Correa, and Ortega in place, to what extent do you think socialism will continue to expand and flourish in Latin America?

MP: It is not likely that the reforms in Latin America will really lead to socialism but at least to some gains for the most desperately oppressed.

JM: Some argue that there is a “third way” that represents a better alternative to capitalism than socialism. Your thoughts?

MP: Maybe they are referring to the social democracy that is found in some Western European countries that provide decent human services and better regulation of corporate doings. But even these social democracies are under attack and face rollback. Look at what has happened to Britain.

It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.

– Malcolm X

Striving with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind, those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying the Earth.

With dutiful efforts, heavily sedated consciences, and sweet obliviousness to the depth of our depravity, we toil away at our chosen or assigned tasks. After all, predatory plutocrats like “Mitt” Romney would be impotent without his minions — the hundreds of millions of wage slaves exercising their “right to work” (for as small a wage as they desire) while obediently manning the bulwarks of a system so putrid that were it possible to feed it to a pig, our porcine friend would wretch his guts out.

Capitalism, as Malcolm X suggested, is in its twilight. Under this malevolent and brutal system of economic organization, we have “evolved” to a point where corruption is so pervasive, the divide between the “haves” and the “have nots” is so vast, and the imperial wars for resources are so frequent and destructive that as it is imploding, capitalism may take most of us with it.

Despite the fact that he mixed his metaphors a bit, Malcolm drew an astute conclusion. With the United States as its nexus, the complex array of components and dynamics known as capitalism sustains itself in much the same way as did Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the vampires of Slavic folklore.

Like the bloodthirsty undead of Transylvania, capitalism is essentially parasitic. Contrary to the inane mythology that anyone who dreams, comes up with a novel idea, follows Oprah “wisdom,” and works hard will eventually sport a net worth north of seven figures, there is very little true upward mobility in the United States. High regressive taxes, low progressive taxes, de facto monopolies, nepotism, cronyism, bribery, a legal system blind to economic crimes of the highest order, and a host of other factors ensure that the rich stay rich and that those in the working class have just enough to ensure their continued existence as hosts for their parasitic masters.
Most capitalists — those who rest comfortably at the apex of humanity’s pyramid of wealth and power AND reside in the penthouses of the Park Avenues of the world — do not engage in the activity which is the staple of existence for most of us. Capitalists do not work. They may engage in taxing activities for long hours, but even then they are not working as most of us understand the concept. Capitalists are not compelled to expend their labor to provide for a family or to survive. They simply administer their vast fiduciary empires. They have “fuck all of you” money and have the choice of hiring armies of highly competent individuals to manage their affairs. Don’t look for Richard Mellon Scaife, John Franklyn Mars, Henry Kravis or the rest of their nauseating ilk to start punching a time clock anytime soon. While us “house negroes” in the United States and the “field hands” in the horribly exploited developing nations on the periphery of the Empire scratch and claw in quiet desperation, our lords and masters feast upon the blood, sweat and tears of our labor.

Yet the US moneyed elite’s malignity doesn’t end there. In fact, their direct actions are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The greatest testament to their indefatigable efforts to maintain their immense wealth and power is the ridiculously effective hologram their media assets relentlessly project. Ponder for a moment the inanity of the holographic illusion burnished into our consciousness that portrays our wealthy elites as “mere citizens” of a constitutional republic that acts on the will of its people and characterizes our nation as mankind’s benefactor, selflessly and thanklessly spreading freedom and democracy. Three million slaughtered Vietnamese, millions butchered in South and Central America, over a million liquidated Iraqis, and countless others around the globe are thanking us from heaven as you read these words.

Culturally programmed from birth to reflexively participate in such idiocies as CNN’s Nancy Grace’s recent “call to arms” against those evil “ravers,” we become our own worst enemies and the principal allies of the privileged scum who hubristically strut about the corridors of power in DC and on Wall Street. Persecuting and prosecuting “ravers” is simply one of many examples of our grossly distorted value system. To ensure the perpetuation of a “just” and “safe’ society, we criminalize “dangerous” behaviors like drug abuse, thus increasing our world leading prison population of 2 million plus — many of whom are non-violent offenders. Meanwhile, members of our ruling elite get away with the same infinitely reprehensible acts for which the Nazi architects swung from the gallows. Electrocution for stealing a loaf of bread, victor’s justice, and the criminalization of poverty are the foundations of our legal system.

Yet the media’s inculcated working stiffs (some of whom apparently still think they report “news”) and cynical opportunistic careerists like Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck don’t get all the “credit” for crafting and maintaining the false consciousness that keeps a majority of us aiding and abetting our filthy capitalist “betters” in their abject crimes against humanity.

Intellectually nursed at the teat of lying whores, most of us spend our lives truly believing the asinine mythology about our nation. Awash in a perpetual stream of endorphins triggered by the constant mind fuck that we are exceptional, blessed, and saintly, we pursue “life, liberty and happiness” (Jefferson meant property when he penned the word happiness) with a child-like abandon as our capitalistic endeavors savagely rape the planet.

Despite their nearly endless glorification as the gold standard to which all humanity should aspire, our national heritage, government, society, and culture are rife with deep imperfections, meaning that the “frightening” reality is that the United States has no monopoly on virtue. In fact, intellectually tethered by manufactured ignorance, imbued with a pathological sense of hubris, exhibiting knee-jerk denial in the face of our flaws and wrong-doings, and, in exchange for our service the Empire, insulated from much of the misery our nation inflicts upon the world, we stand with both feet firmly planted on the bottom rung of humanity.

Yet before we dismiss ourselves as miscreant aberrations who inherited a proud tradition and besmirched it, consider a brief perusal of a few strands of our cultural DNA that coalesced to make us the collectively despicable lot we are today:

The “New World” was settled by significant numbers of religious fanatics who subscribed to the principles of Calvinism, which included the exultation of the wealthy, a belief in humanity’s inherent wickedness, and a sadistic desire to severely punish those who had “transgressed.” Hence our worship of monetary success and our maleficent Prison Industrial Complex.

Once the Ulster-Scotts arrived in the “New World”, they ensured that our culture would be infused with heavy doses of mean-spiritedness, belligerence, and locust mentality. Following their lead, we did a “hell of a job” of eradicating most of the Native American population and stealing as much of Turtle Island as we could. To this day we continue to ravage the Earth like a swarm of locusts unleashed by a wrathful Jehovah.

Royalists settling in Virginia established the aristocracy that allegedly doesn’t exist in our “classless” society. As an added bonus, they “graced” us with the plantation system that proliferated like noxious weeds throughout southern states. Chattel slavery, the backbone of the economy fostered by Virginia’s “Cavaliers,” represents one of the most shameful elements of our history and obliterates the notion that America is an exceptional nation.

Sadly, we didn’t even live up to our hype coming out of the starting gate. While many of our deeply revered Founding Fathers were rather enlightened individuals for the times in which they lived, the government they forged was ultimately of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. While the monstrosity of industrial capitalism had yet to be birthed, remember that most of those who drafted our Constitution were affluent individuals primarily interested in grabbing the power the American Revolution had wrested from England. This white land-owning patriarchy only represented about 13% of the population. If anything, that percentage has declined precipitously throughout our history. How else does one explain a president who is hated by the vast majority of Americans yet remains immune from impeachment or a “do-nothing” Democratic Congress which is ignoring our mandate for them to end the brutal war crimes in Iraq?

Certainly we have compelling reasons for blindly supporting and participating in the depravities of consumerism, militarism, neocolonialism, speciesism, Zionism, and a host of other diseased “isms” we inflict upon the world. However, the fact that we have been severely hobbled by our ancestral roots, by capitalism’s exploitation of our tendencies to act on our greed and selfishness, and by deeply insidious psychological conditioning does not alleviate us of our share of the responsibility.

Revisiting the vampire metaphor, like the immortal undead of lore, we US Americans are spiritually vacuous. Ignoring our spiritual needs to invest nearly all of our time in the narcissistic, hollow pursuits our inculcation demands, at the collective level we contribute to capitalism’s vampiric feast on the Earth and its sentient inhabitants, and at the individual level we drain the life force from nearly all with whom we come in contact in a desperate attempt to fill our inner void.

Yet there is hope.

Despite the nearly overwhelming odds against it, increasing numbers of US Americans are seeking and finding the truth, refusing the system’s myriad tantalizing bribes, engaging in introspection, feeling a sense of moral outrage, acting with a sense of justice and compassion, abandoning what passes for thinking in the mainstream, and rejecting the notion that the disease of capitalism is incurable because it is natural (and even admirable) to consistently act on our greed and selfishness.

It is only a matter of time before decent human beings who are no longer willing to silence their consciences drive a stake through the heart of the vampiric moral abomination known as capitalism.

Absolutely convinced we possess the right to pursue our “happiness” and “security”, regardless of the cost to the Earth and the rest of its sentient inhabitants, we US Americans are in a race to hoard the most toys, to eat the most food, to have the most orgasms, to be the best looking, and to be the biggest winners as we engage in a repugnant orgy of narcissistic and gluttonous hedonism.

Contrary to the false consciousness bestowed upon us by a horde of incredibly adept propagandists who “dutifully” man the bulwarks of exploitative capitalism, we are not “benevolent liberators” or “peace makers.” We wage war perpetually, strip the world bare like a swarm of locusts, and give virtually nothing in return. Ensuring our “happiness” and “security” extracts a tremendous price from the rest of the Earth.

Since it rose to military and economic hegemony at the close of World War II, the United States, its proxies, an array of US-installed ruthless reactionary tyrants, and the World Bank have worked in concert to slaughter, torture, and impoverish untold millions of human beings in the “developing world” in an endless quest to satiate our plutocracy’s insatiable thirst for power and treasure.

Bush, his henchmen, and their multitude of war crimes are not anomalies. Amerikkka the Babylon (as our nation is referred to in some circles) has been a barbaric, opportunistic, exploitative, racist, and imperialistic entity since the first Western Europeans set foot on North American soil. Contrary to the delusion proffered by our “manufacturers of consent” (i.e. the “liberal” New York Times), changing the cast of characters in the White House in 2008 may give the world a bit of relief from egregious crimes against humanity and planetary devastation, but until our malignant system of merciless plunder for profit is eradicated, increasing numbers of wretched beings will languish in misery to permit a relative handful to revel in obscene opulence.

To sharpen our perspective on the American Empire and to renew our sense of hope that human decency has a chance of prevailing, let’s visit with William Blum, a noted researcher and author who has been documenting the crimes of the United States for many years:

Jason Miller: You are quite a remarkable individual. False modesty aside, if you were introducing yourself to an individual who didn’t know you and giving them a summary of who William Blum is, how would that introduction go?

William Blum: It would of course depend largely on who the person was and what the circumstances were, but I might say that I spent the first half of my life in the “bourgeois” world, including IBM and the Department of State, and then was radicalized by Vietnam and became a drug-using, semi-hippie, underground-press writer, world traveler, book author, campus speaker, commie terrorist threat to all that is decent and holy.

JM: In early 2006, Osama bin Laden told US Americans that they needed to read your book, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. What were the immediate effects and consequences for you?

WB: Instant celebrity, on many of the major news programs, including CNN, CSPAN, MSNBC, etc., with a chance to say things to the great unwashed that I would never otherwise have had; 1,000 emails, half hostile, a couple threatening.

JM: Obviously, the dust has had plenty of time to settle. How has bin Laden’s “endorsement” affected your book sales and impact as a political educator and social activist?

WB: About 15,000 extra copies of Rogue State sold. I use the experience in my talks on campus, explaining why I was not embarrassed by the endorsement, as I had mentioned on air, and which had bothered my interviewers, like Wolf Blitzer, who wanted me to disown the entire endorsement.

JM: In Rogue State, you write, “No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.” To what extent can you attribute this conclusion to first-hand knowledge derived from your years with the State Department, or otherwise?

WB: I was a computer systems analyst and programmer at the State Dept; not much privy to important secrets except for the lists they kept of baddies, foreign and domestic. Reading the news carefully, with a knowledge of the past, is enough to make one suspicious.

JM: I note that you spent some time in Chile observing Allende’s attempt to implement socialism. Had Allende survived, how successful do you think he would have been in fending off the relentless tide of neoliberalism?

WB: I think he would have done pretty well at that. He was a sincere man of the left, not a Democratic Party-type liberal.

JM: How much affinity did Allende have for Castro?

WB: As far as I remember, a lot.

JM: Please briefly compare and contrast Allende and Hugo Chavez.

WB: Allende didn’t deliberately antagonize the US as Chavez does. I wish Chavez would cool it a bit. He’s antagonizing homicidal maniacs, literally. Yet, Allende’s moderation in language and policy didn’t save him from Washington’s wrath. Once you’re an ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) of Washington, your days are numbered, or at least your life and program will be made next to impossible.

JM: What chance do you believe the Bolivarian Revolution has of succeeding in becoming a viable alternative and genuine threat to the hegemony of the militaristic, rapacious imperialism which is inextricably linked to “American Capitalism?”

WB: Based on past experience, not much chance. But what’s new is the oil money. That changes the picture. But I can’t predict what’s going to happen.

JM: You left the State Department in 1967 because of your opposition to the Vietnam War. What do you think the opposition to the Iraqi Occupation, which obviously comprises many people, needs to do to increase its effectiveness?

WB: All I can ever suggest is education. Educate yourself and as many others as you can. I write my books and give public talks with that in mind, giving activists talking points to help them to convince others, giving newcomers new food for thought, planting seeds. Our numbers are indeed growing and I can only hope that at some point it will reach a critical mass and “explode”. I can’t offer more than that.

JM: During the Vietnam War, you founded and edited the Washington Free Press. Since there was no Internet, how did you distribute your underground publication?

WB: Mainly in street sales and at events, plus dozens of book stores and other venues; at our peak we sold maybe 20,000-25,000 each issue.

JM: What contact, if any, did you have with radical groups like the Black Panthers and the Weathermen, whose members were investigated, pursued, incarcerated, or in some cases, murdered, by our government?

WB: I knew individual members, some wrote for the Free Press, but I personally was never a member of any group. In later years, I was a member of Trotskyist groups in the US and the UK.

JM: While there are distinct parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan/Iraq, there are also a number of differences. Would you kindly lend us your insight by briefly comparing and contrasting the two?

WB: The US had no intention of occupying Vietnam. But in Iraq and Afghanistan they have done so because of oil and oil pipelines.

JM: What did your work with Philip Agee, former CIA agent and author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary, entail?

WB: I didn’t work with him so much as with other people in London who had a relationship with him. We were engaged in exposing covert CIA officers in the US embassy.

JM: You publicly supported Ralph Nader’s bids for the presidency. I have been repeatedly lambasted for voting for Nader. How would you respond to critics who claim that voting outside the deeply corrupt duopoly is a “wasted vote”?

WB: It would be hard to imagine a more wasted vote than voting for someone you don’t like or support. I should add that I think that most people who voted for Nader would not have voted at all if he was not a candidate. So for all these people, Nader votes did not rob the Democrats of a vote.

JM: When can we expect another book from you?

WB: I don’t know. I’m sort of burnt out. I’m not an author who feels obliged to keep turning out book after book. I have to see a gap to fill.

JM: Your words here: “I’m committed to fighting U.S. foreign policy, the greatest threat to peace and happiness in the world, and being in the United States is the best place for carrying out the battle. This is the belly of the beast, and I try to be an ulcer inside of it.” As a veteran of this struggle, you are a true inspiration to the rest of us aspiring ulcers. What words of advice and encouragement do you have for us?

WB: See my reply above about education. And when you’re in ideological conflict with one of the bad guys, and he’s mouthing the usual patriotic/conservative clichés, don’t be shy of challenging any of those clichés. He’s so unused to having them challenged that he’s often thrown for a loss. Like always, question the motivation of the US in their interventions from a MORAL point of view. We have morality on our side — look at Iraq, et al. The conservatives have a very difficult time dealing with this.